By the time al-Māwardī was writing the caliphate had ceased to exercise effective political power. The issue was no longer the substitution of a just for an unjust caliph. There was no question of the caliph re-imposing shar‘ī government: he did not dispose of the necessary power to do so. The problem with which al-Māwardī wrestled was how to bring the holders of power within the general
framework of Islamic law. It was an intractable problem, but if the ideal of Islamic government was to be maintained and Islamic institutions were to be preserved, it demanded a solution. Accordingly,al-Māwardī, constrained by necessity and expediency, contrived new ways to bring existing conditions within the framework of the law while, in fact, disregarding the law. He recognised the problem
and met it with decision. That he wrote with a full sense of responsibility cannot be denied, but whether the solution he proposed was wise or conducive to the wellbeing of the Muslim community in the long term, is a more doubtful matter. From now on the political obligation of the caliph as the executor of the sharī‘a was not only in practice, but also in theory, limited by the possibility of
fulfilment.
In the circumstances of the time, it was no longer possible to preserve the fiction of the obligatory nature of a universal caliphate and so Ibn Taymiyya seeks a new basis for the state in order to enable the life of the community to continue. Starting from the basis that absolute sovereignty belongs only to God, he holds that sovereignty devolved on the death of the prophet upon all those who by
their learning and virtue were the authorised interpreters of the law and therefore charged with adapting it to new conditions of time and place. This involved him, as it had involved others who had sought new solutions to old problems, in a reappraisal and reinterpretation of the history of the community.